|
In
July 2007, seven
key leaders
of an Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief
and Development (HLF) went on trial for charges that they had: (a)
provided "material support and resources" to a foreign
terrorist organization (namely Hamas); (b) engaged in money
laundering; and (c) breached the International Emergency Economic
Powers Act, which prohibits transactions that threaten American
national security. Along with the seven named defendants, the
U.S. government released a list of approximately 300
"unindicted co-conspirators"
and "joint venturers." During the course of the HLF trial,
many incriminating documents were entered into evidence. Perhaps the
most significant of these was "An
Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in
North America," by the Muslim
Brotherhood
operative Mohamed Akram. Federal
investigators found Akram's memo in the home of Ismael Elbarasse, a founder of the Dar
Al-Hijrah
mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, during a 2004 search. Elbarasse was
a member of the Palestine Committee, which the Muslim
Brotherhood had created to support Hamas in the United States.
Written
sometime in 1987 but not formally published until May
22, 1991, Akram's 18-page document listed the Brotherhood’s 29
likeminded "organizations of our friends" that shared the
common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the U.S. into a
Muslim nation. These "friends" were identified
by Akram and the Brotherhood as groups that could help convince
Muslims "that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in
eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and
'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's
religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions."
Akram
was well aware that in the U.S., it would be extremely difficult to
promote Islam by means of terror attacks. Thus
the “grand jihad” that he and his Brotherhood comrades envisioned was
not a violent one involving bombings and shootings, but rather a stealth (or
“soft”) jihad aiming to impose
Islamic law (Sharia) over every region of the earth by incremental,
non-confrontational means, such as working to
“expand the observant Muslim base”; to “unif[y] and direc[t]
Muslims' efforts”; and to “present Islam as a civilization
alternative.” At
its heart, Akram's document details a plan to conquer and
Islamize the United States – not as an ultimate objective, but
merely as a stepping stone toward the larger goal of one day creating
“the global Islamic state.”
In line with this objective, Akram and the Brotherhood resolved to "settle"
Islam and the Islamic movement within the United States, so that the
Muslim religion could be "enabled within the souls, minds
and the lives of the people of the country.”
Akram explained that this could be accomplished “through the
establishment of firmly-rooted organizations on whose bases
civilization, structure and testimony are built.” He urged
Muslim leaders to make “a shift from the collision mentality to the
absorption mentality,” meaning that they should abandon any tactics
involving defiance or confrontation, and seek instead to implant into
the larger society a host of seemingly benign Islamic groups with
ostensibly unobjectionable motives; once those groups had gained a measure
of public acceptance, they would be in a position to more effectively
promote societal transformation by the old Communist technique of “boring from within.”
“The
heart and the core” of this strategy, said Akram, was contingent
upon these groups' ability to develop “a
mastery of the art of 'coalitions.'” That is, by working
synergistically they could complement, augment, and amplify one
another's efforts. Added Akram: “The big challenge that is
ahead of us is how to turn these seeds or 'scattered' elements into
comprehensive, stable, 'settled' organizations that are connected
with our Movement and which fly in our orbit and take orders from our
guidance.”
The
ultimate objective was not only an enlarged Muslim presence, but also implementation of
the Brotherhood objectives of transforming pluralistic societies, particularly America, into Islamic
states, and sweeping away Western notions of legal equality, freedom
of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech.
Akram
and the Brotherhood understood that in order to succeed in this endeavor, they needed to appeal to
different strata of the American population in different ways; that
whereas some people could be influenced by messages delivered from a
religious perspective, others would be more responsive to messages
delivered by educators, or bankers, or political figures, or
journalists, etc. Thus, Akram's blueprint for the advancement of the
Islamic movement stressed the need to form a coalition of groups coming from the worlds of education; religious proselytization; political
activism; audio and video production; print media; banking and
finance; the physical sciences; the social sciences; professional and
business networking; cultural affairs; the publishing and
distribution of books; children and teenagers; women's rights;
vocational concerns; and jurisprudence.
By promoting the Islamic
movement on such a wide variety of fronts, the Brotherhood and its
allies could multiply exponentially their influence. Toward that end,
the Akram/Brotherhood “Explanatory Memorandum” named the
following 29 groups as the organizations they believed
could collaborate effectively to destroy America from within – “if
they all march according to one plan”:
By setting up these many front groups, the Muslim Brotherhood was emulating the Communist Party tactic of creating interlocking front groups during the Cold War in order to confuse its enemies and make it more difficult to combat.
|
|